When I was in eighth grade, my social studies teacher asked me if I wanted to help some teachers learn how to use “hypercard”, the computer program we’d been using in his class to craft presentations (this was 1994, so the concept of “death by powerpoint” was still a long way off). He took a group of us down to the district office in a convertible that he’d restored himself.

It felt simultaneously topsy-turvy and utterly natural to be in the role of teaching teachers. As you can imagine, it did a lot for my self-confidence to be in this role. We also genuinely did have useful expertise to share. Once I went to high school, nothing like this ever happened to me again, and as I look back, it’s striking that nobody ever asked me to talk to teachers about my true area of expertise: that is, being a student at school.

I returned to this afternoon in eighth grade while editing this issue, because our authors have a lot to say about what happens when you listen to what students have to say about their learning, and, going further, when you “officially” bring them into the process of school improvement.

In the first article, Shreena Bhakta and Eliana Meza Ehlert set the tone with a guide to codesigning with students, which is especially useful because both of them are students. Carmen Coleman tells the story of a large school district in Kentucky that made student storytelling about their learning into an official part of the school calendar. Andres Perez tells a story about high school students helping other teenagers who are struggling with mental health.

We also have two stories about “C3 Mobility,” a project that paired high school seniors with college students so that the college students could help the high schoolers navigate the application process, a story about the tricky balance between “divergence” (letting people do what they want) and “convergence” (making sure everyone’s doing the same thing so you can compare it) in school improvement, and a piece by Amanda Meyer with specific, usable guidance for subverting the influence of white-dominant culture in school improvement.

Thanks for joining us!

Alec Patton
Editor-in-chief